Bipedal Perspective

Some people think because we humans walk
on wobbly, knobby legs that humans rise
above those vertebrates that cannot talk
and aren’t considered valuable or wise.

How many humans could outleap a frog?
Or chase down basilisks across a bog?
Not one could beat a cheetah or gazelle,
or race a squirrel through a tree too well.

Two-legged birds and bats must pity us
two-legged brutes that lack the grace to fly.
And what of snakes and fin-draped fishes, plus
warm mammals in the seas? True facts don’t lie:

They locomote quite speedily without
a single foot! What’s all this fuss about
us balancing on stilts? It’s our disgrace
we upright thinkers never win a race.

 

Craig W. Steele is a professor of biology and health services at Edinboro University in northwestern Pennsylvania. In his continuing quest to become a widely-read unknown poet, his poems appear most recently or are forthcoming in The Lyric, Muddy River Poetry Review, Stoneboat Literary Journal and Journal of Humanistic Mathematics. He continues to write poetry as “The Writer’s Poet” for Extra Innings online.